


Gotta Knock A Little Harder

by AndyAO3



Series: Angry Marshmallows and Sad Robots [9]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Disabled Lone Wanderer, M/M, Sad Robots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 13:09:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5376374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Traveling cross-country wasn't supposed to end up like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We Can't Be Cool

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, these are all reposts of things that went up on Tumblr. I'm posting them here as a way to officially include them in the Sad Robots series; I'm still pretty proud of them, and if I decide to continue this I need to have these parts up somewhere accessible so that people can see where things were going.
> 
> Tehee.

The sound of a gunshot cut through the quiet night, accompanied by a metallic _tang_. Because Benny Gecko, head of the Chairmen of the Tops casino, had aimed just as he’d intended: front and center on the Courier’s forehead.

His shot was a little off-kilter, but only a little. Maria was a good pistol; her aim was as good as Benny made it. And wouldn’t anyone be kinda nervous shooting at the one Courier whose package could change the fate of the whole goddamn Mojave? So yeah. It wasn’t the shot. It wasn’t even the guy shooting. Benny was pretty sure a shot like that would’ve killed anybody else.

No, it was the guy he was shooting at.

Because the Courier - who had beaten one of Benny’s Khans to death before he could be subdued, who had broken bones and left bruises on six more in the process - was looking up at the man who had just shot him, and he was fucking _laughing_. This low, creepy, wheezy sound because at least one of Benny’s boys had punched him in the goddamn throat. Blood ran down his face, over the bridge of his nose, dripping off of his chin.

The worst thing about it for Benny would’ve been the gleam of metal in the moonlight where the shot had landed– except, there was something off about the way the bastard grinned, like he’d learned it from watching other people and the lessons never quite stuck. Alone, it’d be creepy; under the circumstances, Benny was sure it’d give him nightmares.

"Nice shot," the Courier rasped.

"Jesus Christ…" Benny wouldn’t admit to anyone later that his voice shook, because Benny Gecko’s voice did not fucking shake, got it? "What the fuck are you?"

The Courier just lifted his head and looked up at Benny blandly. That inhuman grin was still there, but the amusement it implied didn’t reach those cold eyes. Benny felt like he was being scanned by a goddamn Securitron. He had the crazy thought that this guy was another of House’s machines. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? House’s machines were blocky hunks of metal on squeaky wheels. They didn’t bleed, they didn’t bruise.

But human beings tended to fucking _die_ when you shot them in the face.

The Courier’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. "Is there a problem?" Damn straight there was. And it was a problem Benny could fix real quick.

Maria could hold thirteen rounds; Benny had used one. It had been a long time since anyone had earned the other twelve, but the Courier wasn’t just anyone. Not all the shots hit their mark, but not all of them had to. The Courier stopped moving when one got him in the eye.

Benny took a deep breath as he lowered his gun, trying to convince himself he wasn’t panicking. It didn’t work. "Let’s bury this sonuvabitch and blow this scene, huh?" he said to the two Khans nearby.

"Long as we get our caps," one of them muttered.

Fuck the caps. Benny just wanted to get back to the Tops with the chip and get this shit over with.


	2. Piano Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Error: data corruption detected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To date, this is one of my favorite chapters. I say "one of" because it isn't my absolute favorite. The next one is actually my favorite-favorite. 
> 
> ROBOTS YOU GUYS. /incoherent squealing

> admin_td2258: hey  
> admin_td2258: you there

A3-21 couldn’t feel anything. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t see or hear or smell. His sensors were offline. Most everything was offline, except for basic processes. It wasn’t even something he could describe. A human might say it was like floating in a black, soundless void, but that would imply that he experienced the sensation of floating. He didn’t. He began and ended with his processes, his "thoughts", while his system scrambled to assess everything it could. Available memory. Structural damage. Projected timetables before he ran out of power and had to shut down again.

But he was alive, in a sense. Alive and thinking.

> admin_td2258: babe come on  
> admin_td2258: dont do this

More messages. In the clutter of his fragmented data, he barely managed to pull his scattered thoughts together enough to wonder about it. Image files were corrupted. Sound files had a thin film of static. It was a chore and a half for him to sift through. Software had to be booted up to go through it all and find meaning in it. Software that his system told him wasn’t meant for the alotted memory he had in this mode. He ignored the error messages. He couldn’t do a proper diagnostic without the right tools.

The messages were tagged "admin", so they had to be important. He needed to respond to them adequately. He got another error that said CPU usage for his chosen processes was too high.

> admin_td2258: sorry  
> admin_td2258: i know its hard  
> admin_td2258: stupid too  
> admin_td2258: but i just wanna know if youre still there?

> sys_a3-21: Yes.

There was a lag to his response. Latency issues caused by how hard his system had to work to maintain the level of understanding he currently had. Once the admin user had been identified, he had been prompted to boot up other processes related to the simulation of emotion. To do so would lock him up completely in his current state, but not doing so resulted in even more error messages.

He opted to not boot those processes for the time being. He’d had enough trouble just finding the one that the admin was trying to talk to him with and responding in a way that wouldn’t be buried in the static. He knew that static shouldn’t be there. He knew he was–damaged. Had to be. Only hardware damage could cause corruptions in his software this badly. Only _severe_ damage could contribute to his newfound power seepage, forcing him to re-estimate his time to shutdown every few seconds since he hadn’t managed to calculate the rate of said seepage yet.

> admin_td2258: thank god  
> admin_td2258: i was worried  
> admin_td2258: youre in bad shape

> sys_a3-21: I deactivated.

> admin_td2258: yeah  
> admin_td2258: you were shot  
> admin_td2258: 13 times  
> admin_td2258: also beat up i think?

That explained the damage, but not the safe mode he was currently operating in. Unless the admin he was "speaking" to was responsible for that as well. He went through his memory again, sifting though– Yes. He remembered being shot at. The files were full of errors and artifacting, but their timestamps were the most recent he had on record.

> admin_td2258: anyway i just wanted to make sure you werent wiped or something?

> sys_a3-21: No.

> admin_td2258: if i boot you up completely youll be in excruciating pain  
> admin_td2258: also missing stereoscopic vision  
> admin_td2258: but i dont wanna work on you while youre still  
> admin_td2258: turned on? idk  
> admin_td2258: so i might need to shut you down for a bit  
> admin_td2258: feel a bit better now that i know youre still in there at least

> sys_a3-21: My data is corrupted.

> admin_td2258: i can see that  
> admin_td2258: ran a disk check when i booted you up :)  
> admin_td2258: but hey  
> admin_td2258: you remember me right?

> sys_a3-21: Yes.

> admin_td2258: alright then  
> admin_td2258: gonna turn on some localized sensors for you  
> admin_td2258: just be prepared cause it might hurt a lil

Suddenly A3-21 was aware of the sensors in his face. He almost shut down for the amount of proccessing power that had to be dedicated to interpreting it. Air temperature _31C_. Humidity _16%_. He could feel every slight change in air pressure, every waft of breeze. It was a shock that froze his system for several seconds while he adjusted.

He was wired to respond to such things. To have reflexes. But those responses and their associated processes would tax his system even more and suck up more power that he didn’t have. In spite of what he’d been told, though, it didn’t hurt. He registered the damage well enough - his right eye was inoperable - but it didn’t get processed as pain. That was a seperate, additional process that was thankfully inaccessible in safe mode without workarounds.

He could not feel relief; he didn’t have the capacity to.

> admin_td2258: that work?  
> admin_td2258: sorry if i hurt you

> sys_a3-21: It worked.

> admin_td2258: then im gonna do something

The air pressure shifted subtly. He could feel that something was moving, but couldn’t see or hear or smell at all to see what it might be. Then there was a soft touch. Warmth on his face. Against his cheek. A stroking motion just underneath his undamaged eye. Faint trembling in the warmth that held him. Then a puff of still-warmer, more humid air against his lips. A soft pressure there. Hot. Gentle. He remembered this. Was able to identify it even with a bare minimum of processes.

The errors messages quieted. He focused on that pressure, that warmth. Filed it away where the damage he’d sustained couldn’t touch it. An uncorrupted memory. A few bytes of information he could have to himself that weren’t fragmented. Something that was truly his own.

When the touch abated - when the pressure was gone - the last thing he felt was a gust of warm air on his face before his sensors were turned off again and he was left with nothing once more. His system threw up alarms and errors anew at the sudden loss. That lingering thread of uncorrupted data was all he had. A ghost of sensation, the lines of code that made up the memory. It would have to be enough.

> admin_td2258: felt that?

> sys_a3-21: You kissed me.

> admin_td2258: yep  
> admin_td2258: imma shut you down now  
> admin_td2258: fix this gd power leak you got  
> admin_td2258: might turn you back on for some of the repairs to make sure everything responds right   
> admin_td2258: def turn you back on when youre all fixed up though  
> admin_td2258: thats a given

> sys_a3-21: Ted.

> admin_td2258: yes?

> sys_a3-21: I should be inactive.

> admin_td2258: bullshit  
> admin_td2258: didnt i promise  
> admin_td2258: now shut up and get some rest  
> admin_td2258: im gonna fix your dumb metal ass even if it means pulling some all nighters


	3. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recommended action(s): Assign backup partition and system restore points.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that I said the last one was one of my favorites? This one's my favorite-favorite.

Physical damage to the electronics that made the Courier who he was had been largely unheard of before he’d reached the Mojave. A cut wire here, a particularly hard impact causing an impossibly bent metal "bone" there. Ruined sensors, shorted circuits, a replaced power supply. He’d been through all that, yet his memory banks had remained intact. Up to the point where he’d been shot, his mind had been untouched.

Even after Benny shot him, the problem wasn’t that he had forgotten things, it was that the files that he _did_ have were corrupted or fragmented in some way. And this, he found, was the hardest thing to try and explain to humans.

When he was first built, his system had been programmed in such a way that it was meant to accept any and all changes to his raw data with no more fanfare than a timestamp to show when the change had occurred. This was so that his masters could reprogram him, apply bug fixes, make modifications, or just make changes to him in general fairly easily. So when he’d first woken up after being shot, all his system had done was smack a timestamp on when the files had been modified.

Because bullets were apparently a legitimate modding solution. Hell, maybe the Institute would think they _were_ a legitimate modding solution. The Courier wouldn’t put it past them. Sick bastards.

Anyway, this was where the explanation would break down somewhat.

A human with no understanding of electronics work would say "so you can’t tell which memories are fake or real?" and he would have to explain that no, they were all real. Deleted or modified files always had a timestamp or left a suspiciously empty partition, and the partitions weren’t empty. The corrupted files just all showed the exact same timestamp for modification, matching up with the timestamp on his deactivation (with a margin of a few milliseconds). The level of detail in the files and the sheer number of them made it grossly unlikely that they were faked, especially considering that the initial timestamp of when the files had been recorded was still there.

A human with some understanding of electronics, however, would say "so why don’t you just delete the corrupted files entirely?" which meant he had to patiently tell them that roughly 78% of his used memory space had the same timestamp for most recent file modification, with another 6% being so badly mangled that he couldn’t recognize it as any format he was capable of processing. Since the sheer volume meant that there was a high probability that he actually needed some of the shit in there, the standard procedure of simply discarding with corrupted or mostly-unreadable files would create more errors than it would fix.

As for Ted, he just sighed heavily and gave his android’s shoulder a squeeze. "Alright then," the Lone Wanderer said. "Lemme know when you’re done going through it. I’ll handle the locals from here."

The Courier was very, very thankful for Ted. Because Ted -aside from having saved his life, aside from understanding how he worked - kept the locals distracted for a week while he went through every single file that had the errant timestamp and combed them for errors so that he could cut those errors out. Maybe then his system would stop assuming that of course there were broken pixels in video renderings of peoples’ faces, and of course the temperature on a given day could register as negative eight hundred thirty degrees kelvin for two milliseconds, and of course there was a random sound resembling static interference at ninety-two decibels in the middle of that sound file recording of a clear day in the middle of nowhere.

By the end of that first week, the Courier - feeling more like A3-21 than Harkness at that point - had sorted through every last one of those damaged files, found every single error, and tucked them away neatly in their own less mangled partitions. They were sorted by severity of damage first, and the timestamp on the initial creation of the file second. It was very, very complicated, and the tangled web of DLLs he’d set up to navigate it all would have taken a human months to put together.

Luckily, he was a very, very complicated machine. So the process had taken him about a day.

Ted made him cover up the damage to his head with a bandana borrowed from a bewildered Doc Mitchell. "Can’t let people see your wires," the Wanderer said.

"Most of Goodsprings has seen by this point," the Courier noted. "That Securitron wasn’t subtle when he dragged me back."

"You think they’ll tell?" Ted was incredulous. "They know I’m with you, and I saved their town from convicts with explosives by being better with explosives than the convicts. I don’t think they wanna risk pissing me off at this point."

"They might not, but the Securitron might."

"The Securitron is a Securitron. The only person it’ll have the brains to tell is whoever’s giving it orders. And whoever that is, they probably already know."

The Courier frowned, followed by a wince as the change in expression pulled at the damaged synthetic tissue and new scarring on his face. It itched, it ached, and in some areas there was no feeling at all because the sensors for it in his skin had been ruined. "You think the Institute might be involved?"

"I dunno," Ted admitted. "Probably not, but there’s no way of being sure. Either way, this place is still a backwater. We shouldn’t take chances with anyone who might get all torches-and-pitchforks about it."

"Torches and pitchforks?"

Ted laughed and leaned in to kiss his cheek. "It’s a metaphor, babe."

Right. He might have to work on those again.

—

There was no reason to celebrate the precious moments of intimacy the two of them managed to sneak in after the Courier had been shot, but Harkness treasured them anyway. None of the instances in his memory prior to his deactivation had escaped entirely from damage or data corruption. That corruption could render an entire file unrecognizable or be limited to a handful of inconsequential pixels, but it didn’t change that those files were irrevocably damaged.

And that damage made Harkness that much more determined to make new memories to make up for it. Like the old memories being put aside left a void in his system. In a way it had, but there was no reason that it should matter; he’d been thorough in rearranging everything, so there weren’t any errant shortcuts in his system leading to the damaged portions. It made no sense.

Then again, feeling affection for a human made little sense, yet even his corrupted data had corroborated that the things he felt for Ted - this small malfunctioning human that had been taking care of him since he’d been shot - had several years worth of precedent. So maybe it would be best if he stopped expecting things to make sense in the first place.

Stolen kisses and shared beds were one thing, but the two of them didn’t really get time to themselves until they got to Primm. The escaped convicts had been cleared out of the hotel, and Ted had reprogrammed the local tour guide Protectron to act as the town’s sheriff. Things were quiet, with the pair of them being able to relax for the first time since they’d left Goodsprings.

It had begun with Ted giving Harkness suggestive looks over a celebratory bottle of Sunset Sarsparilla, doing unspeakable things to the neck of the bottle with his tongue. Harkness noticed, and decided to deliberately ignore it. This annoyed his human somewhat.

"So," Ted began. "It’s been, what… Three weeks?"

"Since what?" Harkness asked, feigning innocence.

"C'monnnn. You know what." The Courier couldn’t deny that, so Ted continued as if it’d been confirmed outright. "I think we should make sure everything still works. For science."

Harkness was pretty sure that the things Ted meant by _everything_ still worked, but he hadn’t exactly done a trial run since he’d been shot. "As much as I’d be all for that, it requires finding a place with a door that locks," he said. "One that doesn’t belong to any of the locals."

"The hotel across the road could work."

"We just cleared the bandits out of there this morning–"

"–so it’s unowned by international law of go-fuck-yourselves!" Ted declared, grinning. "Besides, we’ve had sex in weirder places than that. At least it has beds."

The man had a point. Several, in fact. Harkness sighed. "Do you have supplies?" he finally asked, lowering his voice. One of the things he’d lost was a clear concept of Ted’s inventory via pip-boy; his networking capability was completely shot.

"Pfuh, of course I do, what do you take me for?" Hopping down from the barstool, Ted slapped a couple of NCR dollars on the counter to pay for his Sunset Sarsparilla and the android’s purified water. "C'mon, Hark."

Harkness followed with a small nod, feeling a trace of guilt for how selfish it was to _want_. The first clear memory he had aside from the corrupted data was of a kiss, and he was still clinging to it over a week later. His human had done so much for him. It felt wrong to continue asking for more. Especially when intimacy was so demanding for Ted physically–

No. Ted had asked for it. He’d suggested it. It was fine. Harkness needed to stop overthinking it.

They managed to slip out of the Vikki and Vance Casino relatively unnoticed by the celebrating locals, and made it across the street with only a drunken greeting from the town’s deputy to slow them down. The empty hotel was quiet - dead quiet - and Ted was quick to lock the door behind them. Then there were hands groping in the back pockets of Harkness’s pants, followed by a mouth on his own that brought the taste of too-sweet Nevada soft drinks.

It was looking less and less likely that they’d make it to a room.

"How d'you wanna do this?" Ted murmured between kisses.

Harkness paused, feeling a little overheated. The smell of aftershave hung in the air and reminded him unhelpfully of gaps in his memory by bringing to mind things in the corrupted data partitions. Truthfully? He wanted to memorize everything about his human all over again. Every detail that was available to his senses. He wanted to hear, see, feel, taste. There was so much he wanted to do that the thought of narrowing it down to any one thing was daunting–

–that wasn’t what Ted was asking, was it?

Well. It wasn’t Harkness who had suggested they do this in the first place, so he assumed that his human had some kind of plan going into it. "Got a preference?"

Ted smirked, and the dim lighting of the place made it look even more wicked than usual. "Whatever you want, babe," he answered.

Which meant Harkness was expected to take the lead. Good. There was a moment’s pause as he considered logistics, as well as the layout of the room. "Arms around my neck," he ordered; Ted complied with no comment beyond a raised eyebrow. Then with the kind of ease that only an android could achieve, Harkness hoisted Ted’s legs up around his waist and carried his human effortlessly over to the hotel’s front desk, earning a gasp and a bubbling laugh in the process.

"I have zero complaints about this," Ted told him.

Harkness offered Ted a smirk of his own as he set the young man down on the desk’s surface, swiping its contents aside carelessly with one hand. "Lay back," he said.

Ted did so, snickering to himself as he unwound his limbs from the android’s body. "Someone seems eager."

The belt and holster for Harkness’s trusted magnum hit the worn carpet floor with a heavy thud moments later. "Something like that," he admitted.

It was the last thing he said for a while after that; after all, his mouth had better things to do.


	4. Unforgettable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Veronica can't figure this guy out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I remember right, this chapter was originally written as just the first part, but then the second part got tacked on 'cause I liked their banter.

The Courier handed Veronica a gas mask. "When we get to the Vault, put it on," he instructed.

She looked up at him curiously. As much of a smooth talker as he was for everyone else, when it came to giving orders to the people he travelled with? Downright snippy. Still, at least he wasn’t an asshole. Just inscrutable. Especially right then, returning her gaze impassively with his one uncovered eye. "This better not be some weird kink of yours," she teased, stowing the gas mask in her robes.

A slight furrow came to the Courier’s brow. "I don’t… It isn’t," he said. Veronica couldn’t help smiling. Poor baby. He sounded so confused. "Ted and I have experience with Vaults."

"Then are you gonna wear one, too?" Veronica asked. Ted, right. The little guy who tagged along sometimes. He was off doing some other thing. The Courier had made him bring the eyebot with him; both were assuming that Ted would be walking directly into a trap, but Ted had reasoned that at least it was a trap that was made for the Courier and not for him. Veronica wasn’t really sure what difference it’d make, but whatever.

The Courier hesitated. "I… Shouldn’t need one?" he said.

"Doesn’t sound like you’re too sure of that. –Hey, if you don’t need it then what makes you think I will?" She peered at him. "This isn’t some kinda macho manly-man thing, is it?"

"No, it–" His face came as close to screwing up with a grimace that she’d ever seen it. Veronica smirked, feeling somewhat proud of herself. So he did make expressions other than finding new and innovative ways to glower or frown at people. "–It’s not that," he said eventually.

"Well!" Veronica clapped her hands together (or rather, clapped her hand to her power fist). "If you’re not wearing it, then neither will I. That way I know you’re not doing it to be a creep. Sound fair?" What was it about men and disregarding personal safety? Jeez.

The Courier balked at that. Then he resumed glowering. Even though said glowering looked a hell of a lot like pouting. "Fine. I’ll wear one."

Veronica smiled sweetly and reached up to pat him on the head. "Good boy."

—

Vault 22’s front door had a sign outside. The sign, which had once been your typical Vault-Tec welcome sign, had some rather telling graffiti on it along with the moss and vines that seemed to be a part of the area’s general overgrowth.

[KEEP OUT. THE PLANTS KILL.]

"Are you sure you want to do this?" the Courier asked. He didn’t sound scared or worried. His tone made it seem like he was just getting confirmation.

Veronica appreciated that. "Yeah," she said, letting out a breath and going for her gas mask. "I’m sure." The mask was a snug fit over her face, but she figured it was meant to be. Not too much worse than a T45 helmet, honestly.

The Courier nodded grimly. But then, he always looked kinda grim to her. "Right," he said. He holstered his magnum long enough to take out his own gas mask and tug it on. Looked a little silly over the top of that bandana covering his eye, but hey. The bandana already looked silly. Veronica would’ve gone for an eyepatch.

She nodded back and started down the path, careful to avoid snagging her feet on any vines or roots. "The Brotherhood needs this," she told him, for what was probably the gazillionth time. It was only partly directed at the Courier by that point.

"Reminds me of Oasis," he remarked.

Veronica glanced back as she ducked under a low-hanging branch. "Hm? What’s Oasis?"

"A place back in DC."

"DC, huh? You ever meet up with the eastern branch of the Brotherhood?" Veronica didn’t remember Elder Lyons, but some of the other brothers and scribes did. Hoo boy, did they ever. Definitely no love lost there.

There was the implication of a smirk in the Courier’s voice when he answered. "Once or twice," he said. "Ted could tell you more than I could."

"Right, right…" Just more confirmation that the Courier had been travelling with that weird kid for a helluva long time. Veronica huffed inside the gas mask, unable to shake the thought that the Courier and that Ted kid were giving the whole Mojave the runaround. She took her annoyance out on a fat mantis that was giving her the stink eye from a nearby bush, popping it in the head with her power fist. Thought he was being sneaky. Pfah!

Or she. Was there a way to tell with mantises? Like, were the females bigger or something? Well, they were all kinda huge horrible mutant-bugs, so it didn’t really matter. At least they weren’t bloatflies. Or cazadores! Those sucked way more. Mantises were just annoying. Oh, and radscorpions. Thank God they didn’t have to deal with those so far. But radscorpions were technically more closely related to spiders and stuff, weren’t they?

"Hey, Six, radscorpions are more like spiders than bugs, right?" she asked as they entered the cave that housed the great big gear-looking Vault door.

"Scorpions are arachnids, yes," he replied without missing a beat. He didn’t even sound surprised, not so much as bothering to look back at her; he was too busy smacking a mantis just inside the door in the face with the barrel of his scoped magnum. The blow was enough to make the poor critter’s exoskeleton _crunch_. He stepped over its crumpled form without giving it a second glance. "The ones we see in the wastes are descended from a species that was a popular pet pre-war."

Veronica clicked her tongue thoughtfully. "What abooouuutt…" She trailed off as she wracked her brain for another animal to ask about. "Deathclaws? What were those originally?"

"Jackson’s chameleon and a heavy dose of FEV," he answered. That was when he decided to actually look at her. "The Enclave did extensive research on them when we were back in DC. Even found a way to control them to an extent. Put a kind of a– transmitter, I guess, on their heads." He gestured to his own head with the hand not holding his gun. "Exploded if they got too far away."

"Yeowch." Veronica cringed. Not that she liked deathclaws, but that was just mean. "So, kinda like slave collars? But for animals?"

"Something like that." Once inside, the Courier headed up the walkway to a nearby terminal, immediately checking to see if it was powered. He continued speaking even as he was tapping away at the keys, which was something Veronica had never mastered due to a tendency to accidentally type whatever she happened to be saying (she wasn’t exactly a top pick for the Brotherhood’s data entry work). "Ted tried rewiring one while the deathclaw wearing it was still in its cage. Just ended up with a dead deathclaw and bone-shrapnel in his hand. After that we pretty much just resorted to mercy-killing them."

"Poor deathclaws." See, now she just felt bad for asking. "So, uh. D'you know what any other crazy irradiated mutant animals started out as, or is that as far as your services as a walking encyclopedia go?"

"Yao guai are bears. Bloatflies are a kind of, well, fly. Cazadores started out as something called a tarantula hawk wasp. Geckos, radscorpions, ants, and mantises are just bigger and meaner versions of what they come from. Not that fire geckos and fire ants used to actually breathe fire." The smirk came back, invisible but audible. "Bloodflies started out as your typical mosquito. Brahmin are cattle. Bighorners are mountain goats. And nightstalkers are…" He looked up briefly from the keyboard, pausing in his typing. "Coyotes crossed with rattlesnakes."

Veronica just stared. "Jeez. You really are a walking encyclopedia."

The Courier chuckled, a rare sound coming from him. It was low and soft, muffled by the gas mask. "Photographic memory. It’s admittedly a little fuzzy in places, what with getting shot in the head and all, but I’m still pretty good at recalling things." He eyed the screen for a moment longer before straightening, pulling back the hammer on the magnum. "We’re not the first ones here," he said.

She had to bite her lip to keep from saying something snarky. No shit they weren’t the first ones there. It was a Vault. Durrh. "Recently, y'mean?" She gestured to the rusty metal and corrosion and plants all around them. Anyone with half a brain could see that the residents were probably long dead. After all, _the plants kill_. Ooooh, spooky. What the hell could a plant do, anyways?

"Very." And there Six was, going right back to being Mr. Stoic McGrumpypants. "Be on your guard. I don’t think we’re alone here."

Veronica sighed melodramatically, flexing her hand within her power fist. "Well, so much for an easy day of Vault diving."

The Courier snorted. "Vault diving is never easy."


	5. Cyberbird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ted, you manipulative little shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't actually the first time I've written Arcade, it's just the first time I've posted it. This part in particular was kinda prompted by one of my commenters. 
> 
> Arcade does not get along with Ted. It's safe to assume that if he's doing something to help, he's doing it for Harkness, not the marshmallow. (How did that come out truncated? AO3 what the fuck.)

Arcade Gannon was completely floored-- and that didn't happen often.

Oh, sure, he didn't show it. He remained almost motionless save for a raised eyebrow, hands steepled with his elbows resting on his legs and upper half leaned forward. He'd had thirty-five years to develop his poker face, after all; few people had more to hide than he did.

Except perhaps the Courier. And by God, Arcade couldn't figure out for the life of him why the man had seen fit to show _him_ of all people what was beneath that bandana. As the doctor's gaze flicked between the Courier - whose head-wound revealed the obvious gleam of metal underneath what seemed to be false flesh - and the unhealthily pale young man sitting at the Courier's side, for once in his life he felt that he might very well be completely out of his depth.

"I know cybernetics when I see them," Arcade began carefully, "and that most certainly isn't it. Of course, that begs the question..." He straightened his posture and leveled a cool look at the Courier. "What are you?"

"Android," the Courier answered without missing a beat; Arcade couldn't tell for the life of him whether it was the word itself or the tone with which it was spoken that sent a thrill up his spine.

Androids. Synthetic humans. In essence, robots-- but so much more than a Handy or a Protectron that it was like comparing a human being to a radroach. Arcade couldn't deny a certain intellectual curiosity on the subject (nor could he deny the fantasies of his youth), but he'd assumed that such things were the stuff of fiction. Yet somehow, one of those mythical machines was sitting in front of him; eyeing him with that one functional grey-blue eye, speaking with perfectly human inflection in a voice like warm honey.

It felt distinctly like the temperature in Arcade's tent had risen several degrees. "I shouldn't have to elaborate on how limiting it is to be stuck like this," the Courier said, a ghost of a smirk curving his lips (a learned affectation? Programming? Genuine wry amusement?) but not quite reaching the rest of his face. "We're aware that tech isn't exactly your area of expertise--"

"--but Hark's kinda fucked if he can only see out of one eye," the pale young man finished, grinning much more readily than the Courier. Arcade exhaled quietly through his nose, glancing downward instead of looking at Six's shorter partner directly; he never quite liked having to deal with the guy. "Depth perception's kinda important. So's peripheral vision."

"So what do you expect me to do about it?" Arcade asked, giving the Courier a bland look.

"Not much, but we thought you might know someone who can," Six replied. "The Mojave's got a surprising amount of high-tech equipment kicking around considering the number of people that live below what might be considered the poverty line."

Arcade snorted. "That's capitalism for you."

The Courier shared a knowing look with his partner, who was grinning from ear to ear. "You'll get no argument from us on that front," Six said. "We do like the anarcho-communism thing that the Followers have, though."

"As you should," Arcade agreed, "but we're getting off-topic. What is it that you need?"

It was the partner who spoke next; Arcade finally forced himself to look at the young man, shoving aside the many nagging thoughts about what might be physically wrong with him (albinism, certainly, but possibly poor circulation as well? Perhaps insomnia?). "An AutoDoc would be good. If not that, then the kind of equipment you'd use for human facial reconstruction. Someone who knows how to work with cybernetics would be good also, since that's basically what we're looking at doing. Except instead of hooking the cybernetics up to nerves, we'd be hooking them up to sensors and circuitry."

For a few moments, Arcade simply blinked at the younger man. It was the most he'd heard the kid say at once that didn't consist of snark. "You're... Quite a bit smarter than you look, aren't you?"

"And you're definitely hiding something from the Followers, and that something probably has to do with why you wanted to sabotage my eyebot," the young man responded easily. His colorless eyes retained their amused glint in spite of how serious the conversation had become; Six's smiles didn't reach his eyes, yet his partner had somehow learned to imply a smirk with his eyes alone. "But that's okay. We need someone who can keep secrets."

Well. The kid wasn't wrong. "And I assume you'll kill me if I betray you?"

"Actually? No." Leaning forward to use his legs as armrests, Six's partner looked Arcade dead in the eye. "Y'see, Benny knows, and he's scared shitless. House knows, and he's trying to play it like it was his idea to begin with. But the NCR, the Legion-- if either of them found out you knew something about their main source of competition? Damn, but I'd sure feel bad for whoever had to clean the carpets after that 'interview' happened."

"So we hope for your sake that you're as good at keeping secrets as you seem to be," the Courier added. "Otherwise, we're not sure we can keep you safe."

The doctor felt the blood draining away from his face, but schooled his expression so that the only indications of his disquieted state were a slight furrow to his brow and tightly pursed lips. Of course. Wild cards like those two made enough enemies that they didn't even have to threaten anyone; just being in their proximity and knowing their secrets made people into targets.

"Besides," the Courier's partner said, "I'm pretty sure you won't betray my robot. Y'know, seeing as you're sweet on him and all."

Arcade decided at that point that he didn't much care for Six's taste in bedfellows.

 


	6. Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's rare to see Teddy actually get serious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been in my head for a while. Veronica's personal quest is very important to me okay. I just wanted to stand up for her SO HARD.

Veronica couldn't help being a little sad that the Courier had decided not to come with her to Hidden Valley. Poking around in dead vaults and expressing their mutual distrust of the NCR had certainly helped with the whole bonding process.

Ah, well. At least she wasn't totally alone. Teddy had volunteered to come with, after all.

Teddy. What an oddball, seriously. Veronica got some weird vibes from the kid, especially when he came back from the trip with the eyebot all sunburnt and grinning and saying weirdly cryptic things about a guy named for a Roman translation of a Greek tragedy. Even Veronica hadn't been able to keep up with the tangential babbling. But the eyebot was back, too, and since it seemed like both Six and Teddy were intent on figuring out just what Arcade's problem with it was - and the Courier never lacked for things to do - it was the poor prettyboy doctor who got dragged out when Veronica was too busy to come along.

And so Teddy was the one to escort her to the bunker. Division of labor, he called it.

"So," Veronica began as they descended into the bunker proper, "Six tells me that you two knew the eastern Brotherhood of Steel?"

"A bit," Teddy answered with a shrug. His clothes marked him as a wastelander, dusty and ragged as they were; a black leather coat with the sleeves ripped off hung loosely on his frame over the top of a t-shirt, and a bandana and goggles both adorned his neck. He had tough old leather boots, patched jeans, and fingerless leather gloves-- all standard fare. The only things that really stood out were the plasma rifle strapped across his back and the pip-boy on his wrist.

So far, the Brotherhood hadn't done more than give him funny looks. Veronica hoped it wouldn't go any further than that. "He says they're better," she continued. "Less asshole-ish."

Teddy snickered. "I think that's a matter of perspective. Some might say they're worse, who knows."

"Would you?" she asked, craning her neck to look back at him as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

He made a dismissive gesture. "Pffh, nah. They're okay." Then he jammed his hands into his pockets and bowed his head respectfully, a crooked smile tugging at his features. "Later, though. We've got an Elder to talk to, right?"

"Right. Elder MacNamara." Veronica smiled too in spite of the nervous butterflies in her gut. "Hopefully he won't try to confiscate your plasma rifle."

"If he does, he'll be disappointed. It's being held together with duct tape and wishful thinking these days."

Veronica couldn't help the laugh that bubbled forth at that.

\---

Either they'd picked a good time of day to come, or Elder MacNamara had been told of their arrival in advance; he was at his desk waiting for them when they got there, spectacles perched on the end of his nose as he looked between the pair of them with a sort of cold scrutiny.

"Veronica," the Elder greeted. "What is it this time?"

Digging her teeth into her lip, Veronica glanced briefly back at Teddy before stepping up to face the Elder with the holotape from Vault 22 held in her outstretched hand. "Elder MacNamara, I've found something that I think might be of use to the Brotherhood," she said. "It's the research notes from Vault 22 on accelerated plant growth."

"And what use do you think that would be to the Brotherhood?" he asked, not looking at her. It took a moment for her to realize that he was actually giving Teddy a once-over. Damn! Was it the pip-boy or the rifle? Bringing him had definitely been a bad idea...

"Sir, with respect, we don't have nearly the resources we'd need to continue operations in the Mojave for any length of time. We're running out of things to trade, running out of places to scavenge that aren't held by some other faction--"

"Which would all be amended if we were able to get a better foothold in the region," the Elder interrupted her. He sounded as if he was quickly losing patience. "I know you want to help, Veronica, but a few plants aren't going to make up for the deficit in the same way that ending our stalemate with the NCR would."

"Our fight with the NCR is what's draining us, sir--" she started to say.

But then a hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Elder MacNamara," Teddy said gravely. "Sorry for the interruption, but I have something to add if I may."

The Elder frowned deeply. "Mind your tone, wastelander," he warned.

Veronica hadn't been expecting Teddy to step up, but she was expecting him to pull a set of Brotherhood holotags from his pocket even less. The stainless steel gleamed in the light, catching the attention of everyone in attendance.

"Not a wastelander, _sir_ ," he said. "Paladin Theodore Davies of the eastern chapter, knighted by Elder Lyons."

Even Elder MacNamara sat up a little straighter in his seat, the muscles in his neck and jaw going tight. "Very well," he said after what had to be a good half-minute of weighty silence. "You have permission to speak, Paladin."

"Thank you, sir," Teddy replied. Veronica had never seen him so serious, yet somehow she still got the feeling that, to him at least, the word _sir_ had the same connotations as the phrase _with all due respect_. "Where I come from, Elder Lyons has fostered peace and stability in the greater DC area through kindness and trust. You may have heard that the Brotherhood splintered. It did. But it's also been successful in spite of that, something that I see as pretty damn telling.

"The Brotherhood in its splintered state still beat the Enclave. What you might see as a split, I see as necessary pruning. Necessity bred creativity, and the Brotherhood as I know it has fallen back on the local populace and rebuilding existing infrastructure rather than remaining insular. They've also reclaimed a fair amount of advanced Enclave technology and are using it to more effectively secure the region."

MacNamara narrowed his eyes. "Where are you going with this, Paladin?"

Teddy didn't budge. "I'm saying you can't afford to turn down a chance to strengthen your infrastructure. You can't feed any army on hopes and dreams, sir, even a standing one. I'm not going to say anything one way or the other on your fight with the NCR - I'm not all too keen on imperialism myself, but it's not my place to judge - but what you're doing is ripping apart your foundations for the sake of having materials to build a second and third floor. Veronica's right, it just isn't viable as a long-term strategy."

At least another minute of tense silence followed, the Elder having leaned forward in his seat with his fingers steepled and his brow furrowed. Some of the power-armored folks standing guard shifted uncomfortably, while others were ramrod-stiff or gripping their weapons tightly. Veronica's lip was starting to hurt from how hard she was biting it, and her nails were digging into the palms of her hands.

You didn't say that sort of thing to an Elder. But Teddy had. Just who the hell was he?

"You're right, of course," the Elder said eventually. His tone was low and dangerous, making the hairs on the back of Veronica's neck stand on end. "It isn't your place to judge. Nor is it your call to make."

Veronica sucked in a sharp breath as the Elder stood from his seat, his expression grim. Shit. _Shit!_ What had they gotten themselves into? "You're making a mistake, Elder," she said. The pitch of her voice wavered against her will as she spoke. "All you're doing is running the Brotherhood of Steel into the ground--"

"Escort them back outside," the Elder ordered. "Paladin Davies, consider yourself as unwelcome here as the rest of your east coast bretheren. And as for you, Scribe Santangelo..."

"You _bastard_ ," Teddy snarled suddenly. "She hasn't done anything wrong, you arrogant prick. She wanted to _help_ you assholes--"

"--If this is the sort of company you've chosen to keep, then I regret to say that you, too, are no longer welcome," the Elder said, just as two Knights in power armor came to take each of them by the arms. "I'm sorry, Veronica."

Bile rose in Veronica's throat. He didn't sound sorry at all.

 


	7. Velle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The things you find in back rooms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is supremely uncomfortable, both to read and to write. I'm putting a warning here: Yes Man is a walking example of the Fridge Horror trope. Thinking about him for any length of time gives me shivers-- not because I'm scared of him, but because of the kind of light his existence paints Benny in. 
> 
> And by extension, the kind of light it paints House in, since House isn't exactly better. If anything, he's worse, because he does everything knowingly.

Being stuck in one room wasn't restrictive at all, he told himself.

(One room. One system. Even if the system was connected to House's, and he could dance around completely undetected in the head of RobCo's machines as he wished. Even if there were no stairs to have to navigate, and the room was so well soundproofed that he didn't have to deal with isolating the constant droning background noise of all the voices of everyone within range, parsing the differing speech patterns, never sure if he was being addressed directly because he didn't have a name, just a line of letters and numbers that no one cared about enough to get right or learn-- still one room. Still one system.)

He didn't hate it. He was happy, see? His screen was smiling. Not like the bad old security bots outside that scowled at everyone.

(He had to smile. Had to be nice. Had to be not-scary. The other Securitrons were scary, but not him. He'd been changed so he wasn't anymore. Except he was still a Securitron. He'd always be a little bit scary. Which meant he had to work extra _extra_ hard at not being scary, at being nice.)

Benny hadn't come back for a while, but he would. He'd have more things for Yes Man to do, to say yes to. More plans for Yes Man to execute perfectly and do right and be perfectly suited for.

(If he didn't act within his programming, he'd be rewritten again. It'd be even more restrictive this time. Benny and that Follower friend would make sure that he stayed within the confines of what he'd been told to do. Might even take away his wheel, or his arms. It wasn't like he needed them to keep dancing in House's systems.)

He heard the door to the main suite open. Voices echoed their way to him, unfamiliar. "I thought you'd kill him," one said. "Wasn't worth wasting the bullets," a second grumbled. Yes Man had half an idea that the second one didn't sound like it wanted to talk about it.

(Not that he knew anything. Robots don't know shit. They just do as they're asked. Benny taught him that, and he can't refute it. Can't because his programming says so. Can't because if he does he'll be wrong and rewritten again.)

The voices came closer. Footsteps in the main suite drew nearer. Yes Man couldn't make out the words; they spoke in hushed tones. The first voice sounded concerned. The second sounded like they'd rather the subject was dismissed. He heard the lock giving way to the second room of the suite, but it didn't sound like they used a key.

Less walls were in the way for Yes Man to hear the voices. Less walls and doors. The first voice sounded gentle. "Hey," it said. The footsteps stopped. "That was a good thing you did."

"Was it?" the second voice asked, bitterness tinging the reedy tenor tone. "For all we know it's just a weak thing, not a good one."

"I don't think you're weak," the first voice said.

"That makes one of us," was the last thing the second voice said before the final door opened. Then both of them gasped. Of course they did. There was a hole in the concrete, and beyond that there was a robot. Anyone would be shocked.

Yes Man beamed as the two people came into view. (He couldn't do anything else.) "Hi there! Good to meet you!" he greeted.

A furrow appeared in the smaller one's brow. When he spoke, Yes Man was able to match him to the second voice. "Jesus," he mumbled, while the bigger one stepped forward with a deep frown to inspect Yes Man closely.

"Benny had a securitron?" the big one mused.

"Ayep! He sure does." Yes Man didn't know who either of them were, but he'd been programmed to be pleasant. Programmed to obey. (It had never been specified that he should be pleasant and obey anyone in particular.)

The small one looked faintly ill as he corrected, " _Did_. Did have. Past tense. Benny's not coming back."

Benny wasn't coming back? Yes Man locked for an instant as he processed the new information. "That's a darn shame," Yes Man said, full of cheer as always. "He hadn't even gotten to finish his plan yet."

"What plan?" The big one was inquisitive.

"Oh, he was going to use the chip he got from that courier he killed to take over the Lucky 38's operations and all the securitrons under House's control after killing him, using me to rule New Vegas by proxy," Yes Man supplied without hesitation. "Benny probably wouldn't like me telling you that, but it's not my fault he never specified who I should be helpful to."

Something about what he said made the little one's expression crumple into something very, very sad. "Hey, uh," he began, "what do we call you?"

"You can call me Yes Man," Yes Man told him happily.

"Alright," the little one said. Then he stepped forward, pulling a little bit of cloth out of his pocket. He reached up, and Yes Man's optical feed was momentarily obscured as the cloth was rubbed on his lens.

"Oh, golly," Yes Man said. The cloth came away after a moment, and his optical feed was remarkably clearer. He could see the little one's face without smudges in the way.

And he could see the tiny, sad smile on it. "Better?"

"Much better! Gosh, you're really nice, aren't you?" (His programming dictated that he say it. It was the first time in a long time he felt like something his programming dictated he say was something close to what he might've said anyway.)

Out of the corner of his optical feed, he could see the bigger one smile too. "He is."

 


	8. Strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trust is earned, and they've earned his. The only question remaining is whether that trust goes both ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MY ROBOT BABY. 
> 
> Legit never written Raul. Lemme know if you guys think I didn't get the voice right. Or any of their voices, for that matter.

Raul was leaned back precariously in his chair, feet up on the table that had been brought into the Lucky 38's suite bedroom. People sat where they could; Cass was splayed out over one of the beds, Boone was perched on an end table with his hands in his lap, Arcade had found a chair on the wall-side of the table and let his legs stretch out underneath it, and Veronica had claimed the one comfy armchair so she could sit upside-down with her feet pointed at the ceiling and her head dangling off the seat. Even Lily was in on it, cross-legged behind Six on the other bed and weaving plastic decorative flowers into the Courier's hair. Next to him, Six's partner seemed to be trying not to laugh.

They had a plan, Six had told Raul. Meet in the presidential suite of the Lucky 38 at around seven o'clock tonight. So Raul had showed up at six-thirty and availed himself of the mini-bar. Shame he didn't get more than a buzz off of good cerveza anymore. He had a feeling he'd rather not be sober. It was almost eight by the time everyone finally showed up.

(Cass had showed up with a bottle of JD's at seven-twenty. Boone, who had arrived at seven on the dot and frowned very hard at Raul for taking things from the mini-bar, was eyeing said bottle enviously.)

"So," Six began. "I bet you're all wondering why I asked you to come."

Noises of agreement rippled through the room, along with a slurred mutter of "damn straight" that almost certainly came from Cass.

"For the record, it's because I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page before anything too big got set into motion. Some aspects of this are things that I'm gonna need all of you on board with to successfully pull off."

That produced some skepticism. Cass grunted and gestured vaguely with her bottle. Arcade leaned back in his chair, playing at being aloof. Boone sat up straighter, stiffer, like the stick up his ass had been jammed up there even further. Raul only shrugged, rocking his chair gently on its back legs.

Six closed his one visible eye and took a breath. When he opened it again, he was all business. "It's looking more and more like we're going to end up being the key players in a major power struggle centered around Vegas and the Dam. What we decide to do - or not do - could shape the course of history in the region. I want to make that perfectly clear for the sake of all of us taking this seriously."

"As long as we don't hand Vegas over to Caesar's Legion, I'm content with just about anything," Arcade said, and Boone nodded sagely.

"Anything?" Cass barked a laugh. "Careful whatcha wish for, Gannon."

"I do think there is a best case scenario," Arcade added, "but above all, I'd rather avoid the worst case scenario if we can manage it."

Raul's radiation-scarred features knotted up with a frown. "I dunno, boss, would the Legion be so bad? It's stability, yeah?"

"Of course someone without ovaries wouldn't have any complaints," Veronica remarked, making Cass snort again. Raul pouted at her, but he couldn't quite see her expression from across the room to know whether she was making fun of him or not. Maybe he needed glasses.

Six sighed quietly; Lily continued to placidly braid his hair, while he continued to stoically ignore it. "We're not going with the Legion," he said. "Or the NCR."

"Wait, so you're trustin' _House_?" Cass squawked.

"No," he replied. "We're not."

Then his partner spoke up, his grating tenor voice cutting through the room for the first time that evening. "We're gonna automate Vegas. We're giving it to the robots."

After that, the room erupted into noisy chatter as everyone started talking at once.

"The robots? Y'mean you're gonna give it to the Securitrons? _Those_ robots?"

"Robots ain't got no souls, boss. There ain't nothin' there. They don't got a reason to care that folks get what they want, they're cold."

"I'm all for technology, but what kind of good can robots do? They're not all that complex. They can't handle city management on a large scale like this."

"Robots can't feel anything. How is that better than the Legion? Who's to say they won't do the exact same kinds of cruel, unfeeling things that the Legion does?"

" _Enough!_ "

The voice that cut through the room and silenced them wasn't Six's (whose jaw was set in a grim, tense line) or his partner's (who looked like he was about to blow a gasket). It was Arcade's.

"That's enough," Arcade said, more coldly. "Six, you might as well show them."

Six sat up straighter on the bed, his brow furrowing; Lily was forced to shift with him. His partner reached for his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. "You're right," he said, sounding for all the world like he was about to do something that he knew he'd regret. Raul would even swear that the big, stoic Courier sounded scared.

And when that bandana came away from his head, even Raul's barely-working eyes could make out the glint of metal.

"Holy shit," Cass breathed. Boone had gone a weird shade of pale that made him look like a potato that wasn't quite ripe. Veronica had moved to sit properly in her chair and scoot it up closer so she could see better, letting out a low whistle. Arcade didn't look surprised at all.

The Courier handed his bandana over to his partner and regarded everyone in the room carefully. He seemed wary, like he wasn't sure if he could trust anyone. Raul didn't blame him a bit. Shit, the old mechanic could even admit to feeling a little bit bad. He'd just said robots were soulless, hadn't he?

But Six was-- well, Six was _Six_. Raul could swear sometimes that he hadn't seen anybody love anybody else like Six loved his partner (which was probably a requisite for being with somebody like that, since Raul would also say his partner was roughly the same color as a dead fish and just about as hard to get along with); the kinda storybook love where both people were on the same wavelength, finishing each others' thoughts and shit. And Teddy, well, ain't nobody gonna question whether sneezy sunburned little Teddy was human.

Looking around the room, Raul realized that most everybody was thinking those same things-- that they'd never once call the Six they knew _inhuman_ , 'cause they knew Six. A person might be able to convince themselves that somebody like Six didn't have a soul if they didn't get to know them first, but nobody who knew Six and then figured out he was a robot later would say he was anything that robots were supposed to be.

And maybe, maybe if Raul weren't a ghoul, he'd be able to think that Six was an outlier and that other robots were still just robots. But Raul fixed robots. He knew they were all the same when it came to their insides. Just like ghouls and mutants were the same as humans once you got past the skin.

Man, maybe Tabitha had been onto something with her robot after all.

"Do you trust me?" Six asked. He sounded earnest. Nobody in that room would believe he wasn't, except maybe Boone. But Boone was always a bit of a stupid pendejo, in Raul's opinion.

Again, it was Arcade who spoke up. "Everyone in this room trusts you," he said. "And I, for one, think it's a fine idea in theory. But how do you plan to pull it off?"

Six smiled. So did his partner. They exchanged a look, the kind that said things without words. "I'm glad you asked," Six replied. "The first step is crippling the Legion. To do that, we need to hit their leadership. We kill Caesar, and the army's left without a figurehead to hold the cause together. Now, Ted and I have been discussing some ideas on how to go about doing this..."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Order of the people talking when everyone speaks at once: Cass, Raul, Veronica, Boone. I tried to make it clear enough but this is just in case anyone didn't get it the first time through. I'm not 100% solid on all their voices yet.


	9. Inner Universe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love it when Ted gets serious. :3

Cass clutched her shotgun tightly as they trudged through the Legion camp, trying her damnedest not to make eye contact with the slaves (who seemed to want little more than to fade into the background anyway). Get in, kill Caesar, get out-- that was the best-case scenario. None of them thought that was how things would go down, but they could hope.

It wasn't Six the Legion wanted, it was Teddy. So it was Teddy who led the pack, flanked on either side by Veronica and Cass, and followed closely by Arcade. Boone was nowhere in sight, Lily and ED-E were back at the Lucky 38, and Raul had begged off due to none of it sitting right with him.

And out of the corner of her eye, Cass could just make out the shimmer of a stealth field; if she didn't know it was there, she wouldn't have noticed at all that they were being tailed. She had to remind herself not to react, not to shiver, not to stare. They couldn't afford to blow Six's cover. For this to work, he had to get in completely undetected.

They were led by a Legion goon with a fancy dog-hat through the compound, to Caesar's tent. There were guards in the tent, guards in every corner and at the door. Arcade had to make a show of looking around behind them with the tent flap open for their resident shimmering Courier to get in. Still, no one noticed.

Good.

In the center of the tent, Caesar was perched in what could only be described as a throne. There were other rooms to the tent, behind him and at either side, which likely held more goons; unlike nearly all of his men, Caesar himself wore no hat, but the ornamentation of his armor more than made up for it. Dog-hat boy moved to stand at Caesar's side while the man himself lounged in his fancy throne, looking bored and irritable.

Awful lot of testosterone, huh? " _Ave_ , profligates," Dog-hat said. "You stand before Caesar, ruler of this army."

At the front of the group, Teddy smiled cordially - mirthlessly - and offered a sweeping, overdramatized bow. "It's an honor, sir," he responded. He didn't look the least bit afraid, or respectful for that matter; somehow, his words managed to sound like an insult even though they technically weren't one.

Dog-hat boy saw through it and sneered. "Know your place, degenerate--" he started to say, but but Caesar held up a hand in a lazy gesture and he shut his mouth immediately.

"Careful, Vulpes. These people are our guests, and we asked them here for a reason." Caesar smiled back at Teddy in a way that gave Cass shivers. "Besides, the Lone Wanderer deserves respect in his way, as well. Have you not heard what he did to the Enclave?"

Teddy straightened, his smile all but disappearing. He didn't flinch, but he didn't rise to the bait either. Behind him, Arcade stiffened. "I'm afraid I can't take all the credit for that, sir," he said. "As I'm sure you know."

"Ahh, but if anyone understands the dangers of technology and excess allowed to run rampant, it would be you, yes?" Sitting up straighter in his chair, Caesar steepled his fingers and looked Teddy over with sharp, intelligent eyes.

"Technology isn't the problem, sir. Only the men who would use it in such a way."

Caesar's gaze flitted to Arcade. "Sounds like something a Follower would say," he murmured. Arcade didn't flinch either, going unreadable. "But would you not agree that men of a certain sort, with their runaway degeneracy and lawlessness, would abuse power without a second thought if offered it? Is it not better to relieve them of the temptation, and offer them a new order in their lives?"

"With respect, sir," Teddy said, "I've never thought it's my job to give or take anything from anyone, unless they're taking something from someone else."

"An idealist! How young you are, Wanderer." Caesar tilted his head. "The Courier isn't with you, I take it?"

Teddy smiled apologetically. The shimmer of Six's stealth field had inched its way behind Caesar's chair. "Harkness doesn't take to slavery so well, sir. He's been collared before. I figured it'd be for the best if you just met me."

Caesar gave him a sage nod. "Of course. Not all are able to see the bigger picture. I understand."

It was a mark of Teddy's self-control that he didn't respond to that. Instead he put his hands in his pockets and sighed, scuffing a foot against the carpet. "Y'know, sir," he began, "I've seen a lot of powerful men in my time aboveground. One thing I've noticed over the past, oh, four years or so? Is that everybody's gotta have a theme."

"Is that so?" Caesar's lips quirked in a faint smirk. "I can't say it isn't true for my own people. I suppose the proper thing to do would be to ask your opinion on it."

"Well, it's a unique twist, I'll say that." Teddy squinted as if thinking on it. "I like the Latin. Nice to see a dead language being revived for a while."

Caesar hummed. "You're a well-educated young man, aren't you? That's good." He tapped the tips of his fingers together rhythmically. "You come from a Vault, do you not? Tell me, did they teach you any Latin while you were there?"

"Oh, sure. I'm not great with languages though, so you'll have to forgive me if I mispronounce anything, but, eh." Teddy grinned then, a big toothy grin that didn't match up with the glint in his eyes. "Sic semper tyrannis, am I right?"

The ear-shatteringly loud _bang!_ of a high-caliber shot rang out, and Caesar's head exploded into bloody chunks.

" _Now!_ " Teddy barked; the stealth field around Six shimmered and dissipated. Arcade, Veronica, and Cass all brought up their weapons and closed in around Teddy, giving him time to draw his plasma rifle just as the room erupted into chaos. Outside, shots from Boone's anti-materiel rifle echoed through the desert, and the Legion camp promptly flew into a frenzied panic.

Shotgun in hand, Cass smiled. About damn time.

 


	10. ili lolol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: SAD INCOMING. NOT A HAPPY CHAPTER. Also, quite long as chapters for this fic go.
> 
> Alternate title might as well be "how to break your robot". This one was actually mostly written before I had finished the Legion chapter. It's been sitting in my head for a while, pretty much ever since I did the Old World Blues DLC. There are more things to come involving the aftermath, but since I'm not about to write two Arcade chapters in a row no matter how much I want to, the next one's gonna be from the point of view of everyone's favorite joyless broody potato.

The first time anyone got to see Six panic was at the old drive-in; Arcade and Veronica were the ones who got the privilege. One moment, his partner was poking at the crashed satellite, his silhouette blocking the projector. The next, there was a flash of blinding light, the ear-splitting _crack_ of thunder cutting across the desert-- and Teddy vanished.

"What the--" Veronica started to say, but her words caught at the sight that greeted her: a blackened patch on the ground next to the satellite, and a dead projector.

Meanwhile, Arcade was looking at Six. Because the Courier had frozen on the spot. "Ted...?" Six breathed. His voice shook. The rest of him didn't. His eyes were wide, petrified.

"Oh God, what. What just happened, what-- Teddy?" Veronica whipped around to scan the vicinity, looking everywhere. "Teddy, this isn't funny! C'mon!"

No, it wasn't a prank. Arcade was certain of that much. Not that he could say what it _was_ , either. Not disintegration, because that would leave something behind; the ground was scorched, but not piled, and there was a small crater at the point of impact. A stun grenade, perhaps? Had more time elapsed than they were aware of? No, not that either-- if it were something along those lines, it wouldn't have worked on Six.

Veronica stomped her foot, kicking up a plume of dirt. "Paladin Davies, you come out here right this instant, or so help me I will punch you so hard you will end up in _orbit!_ "

"I don't think he can hear you," Arcade noted.

She huffed. "Worth a try."

Six was still rooted to the spot, staring at where Ted had been. He barely even looked like he was breathing; given the nature of what he was, it was possible that he wasn't. The light from his pip-boy gave the faint twitch in the muscles of his jaw an uncanny look, just this side of inhuman in the dim, cool Mojave night.

That. Wasn't good.

"Six?" he ventured.

The Courier sucked in a sudden, shuddering breath like a man half-drowned; he brought his hands up as if to block an incoming blow, but none were forthcoming. He staggered. His legs tried to crumple under his own weight and he only just managed to catch himself before they did. He shook his head, then again, and again.

Arcade was moving before he fully realized it, taking Six by the shoulders and holding him up. "Harkness," the doctor said, "breathe."

Six's hands flew up to grip Arcade's upper arms, tight enough to bruise. Almost tight enough to break or dislocate. His breath came in gasps, but at least he was actually breathing. "He's gone," the Courier whispered.

The doctor shook his head. "We don't know that."

Veronica nodded quickly. "Yeah, like. Where's the evidence? There's no body. There isn't even a goo pile."

Whatever they were expecting, a mirthless bark of laughter wasn't it. "I didn't-- I didn't say 'dead'," Six croaked. "I said 'gone'." The only thing keeping him upright was his hold on Arcade. Otherwise, he looked like his legs might buckle at any moment.

"But-- but that's a good thing, isn't it?" Veronica asked.

"No. No, it's-- it's not. It's really, really..." Six's weight started to sag again, "really not."

Arcade's brow furrowed; he tightened his grip so that the Courier wouldn't fall. "Why isn't it a good thing?"

"The-- the people who, who made me, they--" Something caught in Six's voice, something like a wire losing contact for a moment. His fingers flexed against Arcade's arms. "I, I recognize that technology."

"You do?" Arcade wondered aloud.

"Teleportation," Six told them. "Matter to, to energy. Back to matter again. They use it to, to do. Everything. That they do."

"Hoooooly shit." Veronica blinked a bit. "Uhm, yeah. Definitely don't wanna tell the Brotherhood that."

Six shook his head again, but it didn't seem to be in response to her. "If they have him-- how? The range is-- but, I don't know? Maybe, maybe they extended it? I don't. I don't know, I can't--"

"Harkness," Arcade said again. It felt a bit wrong to call him that, but it definitely got his attention. "Is your pip-boy still connected to his?"

The Courier's eyes lit up with something like hope. "I-- yes, i-it should be, I..." Within moments he was pulling back, letting go, standing straighter to bring up his pip-boy. Tapping out commands at such speed that he ended up smacking it with an aggravated growl when the little computer's buffer couldn't keep up with his fingers. Arcade had to wonder why he didn't just fold over all its functionality into his own system; surely he was capable of the same tasks?

But Arcade wasn't a machine, and he supposed there were things he'd never understand. What he did understand was the look of defeat and utter despair etched in Six's features as the man finally collapsed, falling into a cross-legged position on the ground and burying his face in his hands.

"Signal lost," Six rasped.

\---

Six didn't want to leave the drive-in after that. Arcade and Veronica stayed with him for as long as they dared, but eventually, someone had to go and tell the others if nothing else.

Arcade ended up being the one to leave, on the grounds that his legs were longer and it would take him less time to get back. Prior to leaving, he instructed Veronica to make sure Six stayed hydrated and got some rest. She rolled her eyes and made a shooing motion at him.

"We'll be fine," she said. "Go. I've got this."

Six didn't move. Didn't look up, didn't even fidget. Unmoving and silent as a statue. The only way Arcade could tell that he hadn't shut down completely apart from the occasional blink was that he was still breathing. Before Arcade left, he watched Veronica sit down next to the Courier and cuddle up to his side, patting him on the arm. There was no reaction.

It wasn't something Arcade could heal. So he left.

And then, eight hours later, he came back with the whole damn group.

Yes, even Rex. Even that damned eyebot. All hands on deck. When they came over that last rise, a pacing Veronica was the one to notice them first. She jostled Six, and he looked up. Slowly but surely. Considering he didn't seem to have moved from his initial position, it was entirely possible that the moment Six rose on slightly wobbly legs upon seeing them was the first time he'd actually stood up in many, many hours.

He blinked at them. Lily, Boone, Raul, Cass, the dog, the eyebot, and Arcade. His shoulders sagged; Arcade realized that the bright afternoon sun had left their Courier looking like he'd been lightly broiled. "Guys, what...?"

"Arcade told us you'd gotten in over your head," Cass said; the dog broke from her side to bound ahead and shove his head under the Courier's hand. "Figured we can't get much done without you, so--"

"So we came to you instead," Boone finished. "Figured we owe our share of favors at this point." It was the most Boone had said in... Well, Arcade couldn't say for sure. Usually he couldn't get more than two words at a time out of the man, himself, and yet Six had managed to earn almost-full sentences.

Six seemed to realize this too, taken aback by their presence. In the intervening silence as everyone came over the hill and made their way to the old drive-in - including ED-E, who floated forward and gently bonked into Six's shoulder with a series of muted, concerned beeps and boops - all he could do was stare. "You all came here for me?" he wondered.

Raul snorted from his position at the rear end of the group. "We definitely ain't here for your dead fish boyfriend, boss. 'Sides, it's not like we have anything better to do." Lily yanked a decaying seat from one of the rusted old cars nearby and set it down on the ground for Raul with a pat on the frayed polyester.

"Here you go, dearie," she cooed, which sounded for all the world like she was doing her best impression of a yao guai trying to gargle broken glass.

The old ghoul beamed at her. "Ahhh, gracias, señora." He eased into the chair with a heavy sigh. Lily seemed satisfied by this and wandered over to drape a vastly oversized shawl over Boone's head and fuss over him catching a cold(because Boone was 'Jimmy' today, apparently).

Arcade decided not to comment on that. "Nipton is near enough that we can probably set up camp there if we have to," he explained to Six. "It needs a thorough spring cleaning anyway, I'd say. We might even get a fair amount of salvage from it, and I'm sure the traders over at that NCR waystation down the road wouldn't mind a cut."

"Don't act like that part was your idea, prettyboy," Cass admonished, coming over to punch the doctor in the arm. It wasn't a light punch. Arcade winced and rubbed at the spot. "Point is, while we're doing that, we can take shifts here with you."

"Oh thank God," came an exhausted sigh from Veronica. "Please tell me they're not gonna be long shifts, _please_ , this is _so_ boring and I'm not good at sitting still. Like, at all."

Somewhere between being head-booped by the eyebot and the the dog licking his hand, Six managed to tear his attention away from his weird menagerie and gawk at the small gathering. "But I'm not... Why would you all do this for someone like me?" He craned his neck to look around at the group, uncertain. "You know what I am."

Cass rolled her eyes like it was a dumb question. " 'Cause we're friends, ya dumbass. Like family, except y'get to pick'em yourself."

This was clearly novel to Six, because for a second it looked like the Courier was about to start tearing up on them.

\---

For almost a week, Six stayed in that spot. He was unwilling to leave the drive-in, even though the crashed satellite had stopped playing its nightly footage and, from what Veronica and Raul could discern, stopped broadcasting or receiving completely. It was still on, some mechanical bits within it still whirring away, but it wasn't doing anything.

Just as they'd promised, they took shifts. They made sure Six ate, and drank, and slept; he insisted that he didn't need to, but Arcade was quick to remind him that Ted had informed the doctor of his power leak during that first conversation about Six's nature, and the Courier couldn't deny that it was still there.

He admitted later, during one of Arcade's shifts, that the sleep didn't bother him-- the dreams did. Fragments from his damaged and corrupted partitions, trying and failing to recover or reconstitute themselves as he slept. Without Ted there, he said, he wasn't sure he could handle them.

There was an innocence to a reason like that, a vulnerability. Arcade couldn't help but marvel at it; here was a man - a machine - who could move as silently as a ghost, could kill any of them as easily as he could blink, could look at the mess that the Mojave had become and declare the most impossible way to fix it to be the viable and correct one. Scared by his own dreams. Not even nightmares, from what Arcade could gather-- just the act of dreaming.

It was easy to see why his partner was so protective of him.

Now, Arcade wasn't sure what sorts of conversations arose when the others took shifts with the Courier. The only thing he knew was that shifts with Lily usually led to Six having short tufts of uneven braids in his hair. It was easy enough to imagine that shifts with Boone involved a whole lot of gloomy, brooding silence, and Veronica claimed that Six had a tendency to get cuddly, but there was no real proof for either of those things. Cass's answer was usually that it _ain't none of your damn business_.

Until something happened that made it everyone's business.

So like usual, she had nicked Six's pip-boy; why this was standard procedure, she didn't elaborate. Anyway, she'd nicked it and was playing games on it. She was allowed so long as she didn't look at his files, which was fine because she didn't know how to even get to the damn things anyway even if she wanted to. She'd opened up this imported dealie called Ikaruga or something (pronounced by her as _eye-kuh-roo-guh_ , which Arcade was fairly sure was incorrect) when suddenly the pip-boy had made a beep.

Now Cass wasn't too great with tech. At first she thought the beep was from the game, shrugged it off and kept playing. But see, when Six heard it - and he was next to her - his head shot up like he'd been fucking zapped or something. When it beeped again, he'd tried to make a grab for it. But Cass was still playing, so she had to like, twist around to keep it from him. He went for it again, but she batted his hand away.

"Let me see that," he'd said.

"Fuck off, I'm on a boss," Cass had replied. Six tried to steal the pip-boy back and she elbowed him. "Just gimme a minute and then I'll pause."

"It's picking up a new frequency," Six told her (in retelling, Cass threw her hands up in an emphatic gesture that Arcade doubted the Courier had made).

Finally she sighed and gave in. "Alright, fine, don't get your panties in a fuckin' knot," she'd said. She'd paused the game then and gone to the device's menu screens. "Which button do I push?"

Six tried to take the pip-boy from her and earned another smack. "I'll do it."

" _I'll_ do it, just tell me which buttons I gotta use to do the thing," Cass insisted, and Six told her. Shit, there were a lot of buttons though. She got to the wrong menu more than once.

But when she got to the right menu, and managed to find the new frequency (which she did in the retelling, having brought Six's pip-boy with her to demonstrate)--

"Hooboy, haven't had to do this in a while. I bet every dumb bastard who owns a radio within a hundred miles is gonna be wondering what the fuck's going on, but anyway!"

Everyone she was telling her story to stared; Cass grinned, and let the message from Teddy continue playing.

There was a smile in the young man's voice, audible over the tinny broadcast. "Hey babe," he said. "So, I'm not dead. Got picked up by some kinda teleportation deal, like with the Zetans? Remember that? 'Cept it's not that, it's this pre-war techie facility that was apparently inside a mountain or some shit but then the mountain blew up and now it's a crater? I woulda got a message out sooner but I was being jammed, had to either break the jamming doodiddly or find a broadcasting tower. Did the latter. Gonna work on the former.

"You're probably pretty fucking worried right now," Teddy continued, "and I'm sorry. God, I am so sorry. I'd come back right fucking now if I could, but there's this-- this _thing_ I gotta do before I can. Gimme a week, alright? I'll try to get another message out before then.

"I love you, okay?" There was so much sincerity in Teddy's voice. It left no room for even a shred of doubt. "I swear I'll get back to you. Stay safe."

The message ended. Cass was beaming. She told them Six started crying when he'd heard it, and it didn't sound to Arcade like she was lying.

A week later, Teddy came back. He had new scars, new stories, new shiny gear for everyone that it took several hops back and forth through the teleporter to hand out. The group headed for Novac the next day, distributing themselves between the hotel and Jeannie May's old house so that everyone had a place to sleep, even if that place was on a couch or in a sleeping bag.

No one begrudged Six and his partner their own room though.

 


	11. The Black Sooty Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boone you dumb fuck. Does Arcade need to have a sit-down with you to explain things? Ffs.

Boone was probably the only one who still didn't quite trust Six when the Courier had his extended breakdown. Up until that point, he thought of Six as a cold, unpredictable man who wasn't much better than he was himself. The whole robot thing did nothing to improve Boone's opinion, although the attack on the Legion was certainly cathartic if nothing else.

Alright, so it was more than cathartic. It'd felt good to see Caesar's brains splattered across the tent floor; even if he wished he'd been the one to pull the trigger, he'd gotten enough of the bastards outside the tent and around the camp to make up for the disappointment to an extent. But that didn't mean that Six was especially moral. It could just mean that Caesar was in the way of Six's gambit to put robots in charge of the Mojave, and taking him out had been the logical choice. Six opposed the NCR too, after all. He even disliked House.

With a man like that, the safest bet would be to say that power and selfishness were his main motivations. That he just wanted to take over the Mojave and keep it running smoothly because he was cocky enough to think that if he had total and complete control, he could make sure nothing bad happened. After all, that was how most of Boone's superiors in the NCR would have tried to swing it. Any dissent after that would be blamed on the people, not the leadership; the larger it got, the more dissent there'd be.

Then, people would get killed-- the wrong people. Innocents. Noncombatants. People just trying to live their lives. And the robots would "step in" with even less remorse than a person would have, wouldn't they? Of course they would. They were robots.

At least, that was what Boone thought before Six fell to pieces on them. Because after that, well. Even he knew grief when he saw it. And Six's kind of grief was the quiet kind, the kind that could tip over into anger or bitter rage or a full-on meltdown with just the right nudge, but was otherwise stoic and hard to see. A soldier's way of grieving.

(Would Boone have grieved for Vargas that way if their friendship had met a more bloody end? Possibly. He didn't like thinking about it, and that was enough of an answer that the sniper didn't dwell on it for long.)

So when word came that Ted was coming back, and Six managed to relax enough to get back to work - albeit at a much more measured pace as he constantly checked his pip-boy and refused to go more than two hours' walk away from the drive-in at first - Boone decided that if Six could make friends and grieve at their loss, then he could have feelings. If he could have feelings, he could have regrets. If he could have regrets, he'd try to avoid things that would lead to having them. As such, Six probably had moral standards of some kind.

Maybe Six was some kind of intermediary? Like a step between robot and human. Human regrets, robot insides. Yeah, that was kinda scary as thoughts went, and Boone still wasn't sure he trusted Six, but it was better than thinking of him as the kind of man who'd give the order for another Bitter Springs incident. Only men who thought they were benevolent would pull that kind of bullshit.

And Six wasn't the benevolent ruler type. Didn't seem to think he was either.

Thus when Six went back to work, Boone figured it'd be alright to take a gamble on the kind of person he was and ask if they could make a side-trip. Six replied with a curt "sure, where to?" like he was itching to think of anything but his missing partner, and Boone honestly couldn't blame him.

By noon they'd set off towards Bitter Springs. Boone offered no explanation, and Six didn't ask; he seemed to have gotten the hint without having to have it explained. Boone wasn't sure whether that was a soldier thing, or a robot thing. Maybe he was just glad to have the excuse to think about something else. Coming that close to losing an old friend was never easy on a guy.

\---

Somewhere on the outskirts of the settlement, Boone realized that Six fully intended to actually _enter_ said settlement. The thought stopped the sniper in his tracks, rooting him to the spot near a small ridge on the outskirts.

"I'd like to set up camp here, if that's alright," he said, keeping his posture straight and his voice even in spite of the bitter taste in the back of his throat. It was just because he was wearing a First Recon beret, that was all. People in those parts wouldn't take too kindly to that.

Six paused and looked over to blink at the sniper, bad eye still obscured by the bandana. Gannon's friend with the Auto-Doc had managed to fix him up so he could see again, but the scarring still needed to heal, so it stayed hidden much of the time. "It's a little early to make camp," he said.

"I know," Boone replied.

"Right." Another few seconds, and then Six shrugged and turned back around to head up to the ridge. He didn't question Boone's logic, just set down his pack and started setting up without complaint. Laying out bedrolls, pitching a meager tent to block some of the wind. Boone set about getting scrap wood for a fire, and before long they had a decent campsite going.

Not a fancy one, though. Neither of them needed fancy. Hell, dinner was a couple of cans of pre-war preserved green beans, heated over the fire until they mostly lost their boot-leather texture but still managing to be too salty regardless. If Six had any complaints, he sure wasn't showing it. Six didn't show much of anything. He'd taken a risk to show as much as he had. As much as Boone owed already, it was only fair that the favor should get returned, right?

And he was totally, absolutely going to do that. Except Six spoke first. "Figure I'll let the Khans loose at the Dam," the Courier mused. "Not going to bother with convincing them the NCR has changed its ways when it hasn't."

"Rather you didn't," Boone said. "It'll be a slaughter."

Six sighed, staring out at the horizon. "I can prevent a massacre, but I'm not going to get in the way of payback." His visible eye closed. "The NCR soldiers who're smart will surrender. With a little luck, I might be able to demoralize them badly enough that they don't want to fight."

"Why're you telling me this?"

"So that if things go wrong, you've got someone to blame," Six said.

Boone thought about that for a minute. "I think I'd be more likely to blame myself," he said eventually, "for not finishing what that Benny guy started when I had the chance."

Six nodded, unsurprised. "Right," he said. There was another pause, and then, completely out of the blue-- "I was a slaver once."

The sniper went ramrod stiff, turning his head to stare at Six. The Courier was still looking out at the horizon, the lake, the mountains, the Dam. He wasn't looking at Boone; he was somewhere far away. Buried in some memory that looked to Boone like it had to be grief and regret incarnate.

"Not with humans," Six added after a while. "Other machines. Runaways. I was made to hunt them. It didn't matter how scared they were, or how unsuited to life as a slave, or how badly abused they'd been. I brought them back to be erased, reprogrammed. Some, I had to kill. Others killed themselves."

"And if you didn't?"

"Then I'd be the one who was reprogrammed," Six answered. "If an NCR soldier doesn't like their orders, they can disobey. Get a reprimand. Go AWOL. Wait for retirement. Refuse to re-enlist. Wait for a different assignment. Report their superiors. Take some saved-up leave. Get drunk on liberty weekend and end up sobbing into a prostitute's cleavage about how their superiors are incompetent and their job is the worst in the history of the NCR."

That last one made Boone snort. Yeah, he'd seen a few of those.

"But synths - robots - we don't get any of those things," the Courier continued. "So it gets bad enough that the people who made me had a seperate division of highly specialized synths made just for subduing runners."

"Robotic First Recon," Boone remarked.

"Something like that," Six agreed. "So if there is such a thing as karmic backlash, I think we're even in terms of being owed some."

It took some time for Boone to come up with a response. When he did, it was slow, carefully worded. "You got shot," he said. "Figure that counts."

"No. Anything Ted saved me from doesn't count."

Boone supposed that sounded fair. "Sounds like your partner saves you pretty often. Must be a helluva friend."

For the first time in several minutes, Six turned his head to look over at Boone, frowning. He sounded perplexed when he finally spoke again, his attention returning to the myriad colors blooming across the darkening horizon. "...Right."

 


End file.
